179
XXIII. THE FLOATING SPARS 187
XXIV. SAFE ASHORE 194
XXV. A SURPRISE 199
XXVI. THE STORY OF NANCY FORD 206
XXVII. A BOLD ATTEMPT 216
XXVIII. A STRANGE MESSAGE 224
XXIX. AT THE SHARK'S TOOTH 231
XXX. HAPPY DAYS 237

THE MOTOR GIRLS
ON THE COAST

CHAPTER I

A FLASH OF FIRE

Filled was the room with boys and girls--yes, literally filled; for they
moved about so from chair to chair, from divan to sofa, from one side of
the apartment to the other, now and then changing corners after the manner
of the old-fashioned game of "puss," that what they lacked in numbers
they more than made up in activity. It was a veritable moving picture
of healthful, happy young persons. And the talk----!

Questions and answers flew back and forth like tennis balls in a set of
doubles. Repartee mingled with delicate sarcasm, and new, and almost
indefinable shades of meaning were given to old and trite expressions.

"You can depend upon it, Sis!" drawled Jack Kimball as he stretched out
his foot to see how far he could reach on the Persian rug without falling
off his chair; "you can depend upon it that Belle will shy at the last
moment. She's afraid of water, the plain, common or garden variety of
water. And when it comes to ripples, to say nothing of waves, she----"

"Cora, can't you make him behave?" demanded the plump Belle in question.

"Belle's too--er--too--tired to get up and do it herself," scoffed Ed
Foster. "May I oblige you, Belle, and tweak his nose for him?"

"Come and try it!" challenged Jack.

"Let Walter do it," advised Bess, who, the very opposite type of her
sister Belle, tall and willowy--aesthetic in a word--walked to another
divan over which she proceeded to "drape herself," as Cora expressed it.

"Well, let's hear what Jack has to say," proposed Walter Pennington,
bringing his head of crisp brown hair a little closer to the chestnut
one of Bess. "He has made a statement, and it is now--will you permit
me to say it--it is now strictly up to him to prove it. Say on, rash
youth, and let us hear why it is that Belle will shy at the water."

"It's a riddl